“POPULAR” NAMES FROM SUFFOLK AND SUSSEX

I was born and brought up in urban Sussex, but never acquired a Sussex accent. However, a recent guide to the Sussex dialect by Tony Wales showed me how many Sussex dialect words I used as a child, seventy odd years ago. I have now spent more of my life in Suffolk than in Sussex and know its local words better. I found it interesting to compare the local names for wildlife in the two counties and thought SNS members might also be interested. I will select a few amusing or revealing names.

Insects often have local names but they are seldom very specific. In Suffolk a ladybird is a ‘Bishy Barnabee’, a probable connection with St Barnabas; but in Sussex it is sometimes ‘God Almighty’s Cow’. Dr A.W. Ewell in his excellent book on ladybirds points out the preponderance of names in many languages dedicating the beetle to God or to the Virgin Mary, and many names involve the cow.

A dragonfly is a ‘Hoss Needle’ in Suffolk, although dragonflies do not sting horses or anything else, but have the strange name ‘Mousearnickle’ in Sussex. Were they thought to nick the ears of Sussex mice?

The cockchafer is a ‘Michamadore’ in Suffolk, I do not know why, and its larva is a ‘Choobe’, whereas in Sussex the larva is a ‘Joe Bassett’.

‘Emetts’ are ants in Suffolk; they are ‘Ammots’ in Sussex.

A particularly attractive local name in Sussex is that for gnats, ‘Shimeroys’. They do ‘shimmer’ in sunlight!

Suffolk has the best name for snails – ‘Hodnedods’, whereas in Sussex they are merely ‘Snags’ or ‘Snegs’.

When it comes to vertebrates, a weasel is, predictably, a ‘Mousehunta’ in Suffolk, but less obvious, a ‘Kine’ in Sussex (where a hedgehog is a ‘Prickleback Urchin’).

A slowworm is a ‘Deaf Adder’ in Sussex. Do we use that name in Suffolk?

There are always local names given to birds. The ‘Titty Wren’ (wren) of Suffolk is a ‘Scutty’ in Sussex and the ‘Dorhawk’ (nightjar) of Suffolk is a ‘Puck’ in Sussex.

Even fossil sea urchins have local names in Sussex. We called the internal casts in flint of the cretaceous Echinus spp ‘Shepherds’ Crowns’, ‘Fairy Loaves’ and sometimes ‘Thunderbolts’. They were kept on cottage windowsills to keep the witches away. It usually worked. The name ‘Thunderbolts’ was more often given to lumps of iron pyrites in the chalk, or to fossil belemnites. Are these names used in Suffolk?

There is often a basic similarity, even when local names differ. For example, yew berries are ‘Snotty Gobbles’ in Suffolk and ‘Snottgogs’ in Sussex and whereas most of us call the dark green rings caused by fungi in grassy meadows ‘Fairy Rings’, they are ‘Hagtracks’ in Sussex.

There are so many local names for plants that I shall name only two. ‘Traveller’s Joy / Old Man’s Beard’ (Clematis vitalba) was called ‘Boy’s Bacca’ in Sussex, and I can remember trying to smoke pieces of the dried stem on the way home from school. It tasted foul. More successful was eating ‘Bread and Cheese’, young hawthorn shoots (Crataegus monogyna).

Although a study of dialect words can be useful to the historian, from the point of view of a recorder of wildlife, Martin Sanford and others should be very grateful to Linnaeus for his binomial system.

 

References

Excell, A.W. (1991). The history of the ladybird with some diversions on this and that. Erskine Press

Heathcote, G.D. (1989). What’s in a name? Trans. Suffolk Nat Soc. 25, 13-16.

Simpson, F.W. (1982). Simpson’s flora of Suffolk. Suffolk Naturalists’ Society, Ipswich.

Wales, T. (2000) Sussex as she wus spoke. A guide to the Sussex dialect. S.B. Publications.

Geoff Heathcote

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